PART II

Step 7: Take the cord you have tied in a half hitch and slide it to butt up againest the bottom of the serving. Then take a screwdriver or something stout, wrap the cord around it and tighten the snot out it... get all the stretch out.

Now you are ready to tie a similar knot on the BOTTOM of the half hitch. You don't have to tie nearly as many half hitches as you did above. All you want this knot to do is hold the hitch in the cord in place. I usually tie about 8-10 knots. This knot you will be able to slide up and down the cable, so tie it low and slide it up to butt againest the bottom of the hitch.



When you slide that bottom knot up it should look like this. Your cord is now securely and neatly attached to your cable.




Step 8: Now its time to time the rest. If you haven't yet put a nock set and loop on your bow... check out Greg's sticky post at the top of the tech page. I do mine a little differently, but Greg's method is great and his post is very well laid out and easy to follow.

On most drop away rests, you'll have some type of set screw or other device that holds the cord to the rest. In some cases, its just a hole that the cord runs through. No matter, what you want to do is pull the cord almost totally tight while the bow is just sitting at brace. Obviously its going to be too short, but we are going to let the bow dictate the cord length. On this QAD, there is a set screw on the thumb wheel. Loosen that set screw and pull the cord through. On other drop aways such as Trophy takers, a brass nock set is useful (its about the only thing its useful for) just simply to serve as a reference point.

Now that you have the cord taught at brace, draw the bow back... the cord will feed itself through and be nice and tight at full draw. Let the bow back down and pull about another centemeter of cord through the rest. This will make it raise up faster.





Like Greg, I don't use (and frankly loath) brass nock sets. I tie in my own. There are lots of ways to do this. I think the way I do it is faster than Greg's, its certainly no less solid, but Greg's are cleaner looking. Make sure your D-Loops knots are on opposite sides!





Notice I switched arrows for drawing the bow back. I've never (touch wood) had a knot come out, but I don't take any precautions either. This Carbon Express measurement arrow is about as tough as they come, and it has a rubber bludgeon on the end. Its espeically useful here because you can see exactly how/where I have set the rest to come full upright.

This first picture is after I have drawn the bow with the set loose. Notice that a lot of the cord has pulled back through the rest leaving me with about a 4" tag end.



Now I get my grease pencil back out and mark the cord flush at the back side of the thumb wheel. That I use as a reference, because if the cord is at that position, it will be coming full taught right at the wall (which is too late). What I do is pull about a quarter inch or so (centermeter roughly) of cord back through the set. This will make the rest come up sooner. You want the rest to be coming full up set about an inch and a half to 2" before the wall. In the case of the admiral that is about an inch before the valley. Mark the cord, tighten the set screw, and now its time to check the timing.




You can see in picture one that the rest hasn't yet come up. For a point of reference, lets use the forward berger hole. On this graduated arrow, I'm at 26" and the rest is just getting ready to start coming taught.

In the second picture, I'm at full draw, pulled into the back wall and you can see that 28" is right at the forward berger hole. Thats about perfect.... 2" before the wall she rises up... she's taught at 1.5"... which gives us that much safety gap. The other thing I do is take a lighter and singe the cord to take all the play out of it. It will take a fair amount off the length. Don't over do it because you can melt through it. You'll notice the cord will move when you burn it tight.... almost like a worm out of the container. It will also make it much much stiffer... which is good because in extreme cases you can have your cord whip back toward the arrow and it can catch the fletchings, which will really foul up your performance... and its a hard thing to catch too.



Full draw.



Thats pretty much all there is to it. You may have to adjust a bit on cord length... you won't always nail it the first time. When you have the length right... cut off the excess... save it, because it might be enough to make a D-Loop from (you need exactly 4.5"), and its always good to have a spare.

I take a fray the end of the cord, and burn it back flush with the thumb wheel. Double check and make sure everything is good and tight.



Finished product.